


Casual Mondays

by claremontpsych



Series: kids in the night! [2]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Childhood Trauma, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Malcolm Bright Gets a Hug, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-23 02:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23570617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claremontpsych/pseuds/claremontpsych
Summary: A casual Monday fell over New York City in the same way it did every week, dragging the Major Crimes Unit out on another gruesome murder case. Despite the routine, almost broken record drag of the day, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that something was wrong with Malcolm Bright. Something beyond his usual trauma, that is, as his energy was no longer the manic bundle of anxieties that it usually is. He was mellow, almost a hollowed-out version of himself, and it set Gil and Dani on edge. Edrisa worried about him, too, as for the first time in his entire NYPD career he didn’t seem to share her morbid humor in the quirkier elements of death. He focused on his work, and nothing more. No outside quips, no fun facts about the psychology of murder, none of what makes Malcolm his usual self.OR, a Brightwell one shot based on "Casual Mondays" by Weathers
Relationships: Malcolm Bright/Dani Powell
Series: kids in the night! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687321
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	Casual Mondays

A casual Monday fell over New York City in the same way it did every week, dragging the Major Crimes Unit out on another gruesome murder case. Despite the routine, almost broken record drag of the day, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to tell that something was wrong with Malcolm Bright. Something beyond his usual trauma, that is, as his energy was no longer the manic bundle of anxieties that it usually is. He was mellow, almost a hollowed-out version of himself, and it set Gil and Dani on edge. Edrisa worried about him, too, as for the first time in his entire NYPD career he didn’t seem to share her morbid humor in the quirkier elements of death. He focused on his work, and nothing more. No outside quips, no fun facts about the psychology of murder, none of what makes Malcolm his usual self. 

In fact, this weird and hollow and un-Malcolmly Malcolm lasted a handful of days, and even through them solving the case. If nothing else, everyone simply assumed that a case closed would be enough to bring life back into Bright’s eyes… but they assumed wrong, evidently. Malcolm shared a glass of scotch with Gil the night of closing the case, as he usually would, and he avoided all questions about his mental state. He simply apologized for being off his game (he wasn’t) and went home.

What made that even more worrisome is that, when Dani tried to text him that night, he didn’t text back. She tried a call, too, because he often accepts most calls that come to him no matter the hour, and he didn’t even answer it. It was like he disappeared completely, just popping away as soon as his shift ended. Dani contemplated going over to his place to see if he was alright, but she opted for a less invasive method of calling Gil to tell him that something was seriously wrong here. She informed him that, evidently, Malcolm had just disappeared completely. Gil decided that he should call Jessica, because if nobody else, Jessica Whitly always knows exactly where her son is and why. It made his stomach sink when she told him that, in fact, she wasn’t aware of his change in mood nor his lack of answering his phone. Immediately, Gil told Dani that she was entirely within her rights to go bust his door down and see if he was even breathing, and that is precisely what she did.

Well, sort of. She used his spare key to let herself in and look for him, calling as she walked in to see if his phone was even in the loft.

She found the thing in the garbage, along with god knows how many pill bottles. She honed her detective skills in that moment, because if she wasn’t already convinced that something was terribly, horribly wrong, she now knew for certain that was the case. She called out his name, no reply. She looked for him everywhere, and eventually found him in the place she least expected him to be. 

He was sitting in his bathtub, staring blankly, fully clothed in the suit he’d been wearing earlier that day. There were little droplets of water on the mirror as if there had been steam in the bathroom, but the water was cold, meaning he had definitely been there a while.

“Bright? Are you okay?” Dani asks, panicked. He doesn’t speak as a response, he just gently shakes his head no, his eyes trained on the tiles of his shower as if he was trying to count them. Dani sighed and grabbed him by the underarms, pulling him up out of the bath water and making him look at her.

“Bright, baby, talk to me. What’s going on? Is it your dad?”

“I-” He tries before he loses the words he wanted to say, breaking down in her arms. She holds him close until he settles down, then getting him a towel and some dry clothes and telling him to dry off and come join her on his bed so they could talk it out comfortably. She knew that he was an utterly nuanced man, and she wanted to open a space in which he could explain what prompted this breakdown.

When he returned from the bathroom, now in a Harvard sweatshirt and flannel pajama pants, he sat on the very edge of the bed, far from where Dani found herself sitting. It was odd, certainly, as usually when the pair are together, they’re close. Malcolm trusts Dani more than he trusts most other people, and the same can be said vice versa. So why did it pain the detective so much that her partner didn’t even want to come near her?

“The issue here…. Its change. Change, to me, is a weapon. It throws everything in my world off balance seamlessly any time someone so much as changes the way they take their morning coffee.” Malcolm starts, his voice hoarse as if he’d spent the time before she showed up screaming at the walls (in all fairness, he had done precisely that).

Dani nods, “What changed? I understand if you don’t want to tell me but, Bright, we’re all worried about you. Why’d you trash your phone?”

“Well it started with my psychologist changing my dosages. Ruined my whole routine with my meds because if you change one, with me, you change them all. So that threw me off. Then I got a call saying they’re giving my dad more privileges. More phone time, more television time, more time to constantly bother me and ruin my life and draw me back to him. I trashed my phone to get away from it all-- from him.”

“Oh, Bright,” Dani sighs, knowing that all of this at once must be seconds from tipping him past his breaking point.

“I feel like I’ve stopped caring about anything, anyone. Everything has just stopped around me and I don’t know how to fix it and I know in my mind that this is just my psychological response to fear and my less than superb childhood but I still don’t know what to do and… Dani I’m scared”  
The last part came out sheepish, a whimper. He didn’t want to admit this fact to her, but it slipped out along with the rest of the words and she couldn’t help but to crawl across the bed to where he is and wrap her arms around him.

“You’re okay, Malcolm. This’ll sort itself out. It always does. Call your therapist, tell her that the new meds aren’t cutting it. Take your power back” She suggests, trying to give him advice despite not knowing how to handle his situation.

He nods slowly, taking the time to process every word individually. He turns to face her, tears streaming down his face, “I hate seeing the same four walls constantly but I just want to shut myself off in here forever”

“You can’t do that to us,” she says playfully, giving him a gentle shake. Her arms were still wrapped around him, this marking the first ever time that he hasn’t complained about her cold skin touching his, “We need you! You closed the case this week”

“I….. I guess so,” He cuts himself off with a yawn-- he hasn’t slept in at least three days, Dani knows, and this is around the time that exhaustion sets in.

“Do you want me to stay here for the night?” She asks.

“Please?”

**Author's Note:**

> So! Part 2 of the Kids In The Night series! Huzzah! This one leans a little on the sadder side, I know, but a handful of the ones from this series are gonna haha. Don't forget to leave comments/Kudos :)


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